Lukieboos is going home...

Luka is going home to his mum after being on vacation here, which we knew was not going to go over well with the president and vice president (aka La and Lily) of the Lukieboo Fan Club. When I first told La he wailed that Luka needed to stay here and proceeded to have a fit before curling up while glaring and pretending to be a fire breathing dragon roasting me. Not one for subtlety of expression our La!

I reminded him he's known all along Luka isn't ours to keep, that we'll see him again, that his mum misses him a lot and so on. He was unimpressed, so being a good mum I told him it's okay to be sad or angry and asked if there's something we might do that might make him feel better. Maybe he could paint a picture or make a book with photos in it that he could look at to remember all the fun he's had? When I didn't get much response I told him to just think about it.

A little while later while we were cleaning up the yard he's informed me he knows what will make him feel better since Luka has to go home. He does want to paint a picture but apparently the only thing that will make it better is to get a puppy of his very own. ~_~ I shoulda known better than to ask! He was doubly unimpressed when I told him that we're not getting a puppy for a good while yet and when we do it won't be just his. Poor La, it's not easy being five!

The finished bit of fluff

From the WC Acrylics board Different Strokes Feb 2011 challenge. I'd been undecided if I wanted to go with my usual way of doing things (aiming for realistic, hitting a somewhat painterlyish approximation of it) or try for something else. I got it to a base layer of 'usual', shelved it because I didn't like it and the yesterday decided "ah heck, the deadline is tonight, I'm going to just play and see what turns up." First I started doing sort of impressionistic squinty smudges but 10 mins in I gave it a good wash and this little bit of fluff popped out. LOL It's what happens when you paint sitting in the car waiting to pick your kid up with the comic section of newspaper spread out. Hopefully I can get a bit better at other styles playing with these challenges!

8x10 canvas panel, acrylics of course ;)

painting updates

I've been painting a fair bit this week... a bit of cheap therapy for a week that's not been wonderful. These are my fourth, seventh and third attempts at painting respectively having not painted while I was doing the drawing-a-day challenges the other months.

Worked a bit more on this lad. He's acrylics on 10x12" (25.4x30.5cm) canvas panel. Still early days yet but at least he's not *quite* as flat as he was anyway.

A new one started the other day... second and third layers of mumma cow having a sweet moment with her bubba. (First layer is just a light wash of pale goldytan to get rid of white canvas.) Acrylic on 4x6" (13x18cm) canvas. The glare in the upper right corner is just camera as some colours are more matte or glossy than others. Deviated from pure Zorn palette by adding pthalo blue here.

The base of another I started working the other day. I like starting new ones. LOL I have another of Sierra and one of Hope already planned... to be fair I do work on them all at the same time as I don't do wet-on-wet, so I go from one canvas to another as they use similarish colour mixes and there's no sense wasting paint while waiting for the first to dry enough to do the next bit on. Leo is a blue merle Collie Rough owned by one of my flyball teammates. Collie fur is proving surprisingly different than Aussie coat and I've had to totally change brushes to get the start effect of his longer ruff.

For those who don't know when Cami and Verity passed I buried them in the same area (they were always inseperable in life, so it seemed right they be together now too) and decided to make the area a memory garden we call the Rainbow Bridge Garden. Where Verity rests I put an angel statue and it's surrounded with forget-me-nots, little salvias, roses, daffodils, a federation daisy, iris and some other favorites. I go there whenever I'm thinking about them and it's a sunny, warm spot to remember things.

While I was out there today a big dragonfly appeared. Now I know dragonflies aren't uncommon but in almost 5 years of living here I've never seen one on our property so it was pretty surprising and I stood still to watch it for awhile.

Instead of flitting off and around though as I'd expected, it circled around me for ages about a meter and a half out, just in circles. It was so weird I just stood still watching it and feeling a bit amazed, we had dragonflies all over in the US and I've never had one circle me let alone for such a long time! Then it flew over Verity's angel and just hovered there for a good two minutes (timed on my mobile) before flying back over me and repeating the circles for not quite five minutes. It flew back to her angel for just a second before La came up to see what I was doing and when I looked back from him it'd gone.

Amazing hey?

A Borderbrat update

Because my feral little pointy black Rindog is just such a funny little nutterbutter!

Fiftyone billionty in my photo series of "Places Border Collies Do Not Belong(But Go Anyway)"

She knows she's not supposed to go over the fence into the paddocks. Technically she hasn't gone over the fence. Technically. ;p At first she'd bounce over and I'd tell her to get back. Then she'd try to come under and I'd tell her to get back. Then she tried to wiggle through and I told her to get back. Eventually she came upon this solution and just perches there like a cat.

Fiftyone billionty and one in the series. The pile of bricks I've got stacked waiting to be made into garden paving. They give a nice vantage point and soak up the heat so they're warm. Comfy hey?

And an ever so slightly SOGGY Rin-chan. Courtesy of all our storms!

Goofy girls. LOL

And a few of her just being bootiful. She's such a gorgeous girl. :)

By way of update on the critter front, Dexter had to go back in for another tooth trim - it'd already grown that much! While we were there we could tell the other incisors hadn't grown though, which we'd hoped they would. Still I've read they can take 6+ weeks to re-erupt properly after an injury so there is some hope they may regrow. In the meantime there was still some puss around the molar where they suspect the abscess so he's been prescribed long-term antibiotic injections (procaine/pen G). Bunnies abscess a bit differently than most animals. They lack an enzyme which makes it liquid and easy to drain like most animals. As well they tend to encapsulate it and it grows very slowly which is good in one way as they don't suffer from fever or so much pain but difficult in another as it means they are difficult to get rid of and don't easily drain.

He's very good for the injections, I give him a bit of cherry tomato and he doesn't even notice the little needle. He's lot a bit of weight as well so he's on Critical Care which is a special soft food for bunnies that is nutritious and appealing. It gets mixed into a paste and fed to him and he is just the sweetest fellow - just sits there on his little pillow and has a dollop squirted in, chews it, little tongue licking his lips and when he's done has a bit more. If I'm a bit slow he'll sniff at or lick the tip! LOL The pics are him on his little pillow while I was mixing the crit care up and after his food getting a kiss from La.

All together this week seems to just have disappeared on me... namely with school restarting and the roof (that'd be the one replaced last year due to springing a leak and frying all electrics...) re-sprung a leak and causing water damage in 3 rooms. Getting the roofing company to honor it's guarantee is interesting. To boot the tractor that was just fixed busted again and seriously I'm half expecting at any moment to hear a country guitar twang and the start of a theme song about how life done did me wrong writing all this! LOL My birthday was a few days ago as well and that turned out to be quiet but nice. Lily and I hung around the house with the dogs, kits and buns during the day. I got some painting done. I had a nice dinner with everyone and Nic totally surprised me as I was expecting no gift given how many big bills we've generated by presenting me with a laptop! He's apparently been paying for one to be refurbished for a year or so! It's not quite ready but still very exciting! (Our last computer predates our relationship so it was due!) Then Sunday I got given a day to myself at Flyball, just me and Hopie out having fun!

Here's La on his first day back at what would have been the equivalent to the start of primary school vs preschool/kinder. The school has a new building almost finished and welcomed a new teacher who will be sharing in his class so he's excited about that as well as being back with his friends again. A few more of Sir 5 Year Old.


and this is the view just near his school... how gorgeous is that hey!

Plus one of the Lilypillie, who is enjoying having mum all to herself (well, comparatively... still has to share with the furkids) now that La is in school full time!

Art wise, I've royally slacked off most of January. Trying to get back into the swing of things and make time for myself in February. I have two paintings on the go and one more in my goals for the month list. The first is (act shocked...) a dog. Nothing new there although I'm playing with a limited palette - cad red med, cad yellow med, black and white. Here's the roughed in first layer, excuse the dreadful flash shine, rug and jeans!

The second and third are part of challenges. Number two is a WC Acrylics board Different Strokes challenge. The rules let you crop, choose a section/detail, enlarge it or develop it any way you feel like. I really liked the orange lilies up against the bronzy background plant, so I'm planning to tightly crop on that. I can't decide if I want to go with my usual way of doing things given I'm still very new to it or try for something looser, more impressionistic and impastoish. This is the base layer for if I go my usual way. Wibbledywobbdly, indecisive.

The third challenge is to take myself totally out of my comfort zone and go to an abstract challenge I happened upon on the Abstract forum - which is to see how little 'detail' can you use in a piece of art and still convey your 'meaning' - however you understand that term. The subject is a rainstorm, hopefully mixed with a yellowtail black cockatoo. Start of the storm...

Random and unconnected to anything - our neighbors foals, who are just too much fun to watch running around! I mucked with it a bit, think it might make a nice painting eventually?